About Us
Since 2016, we have held symposia, colloquia, and workshops, published edited volumes, and funded projects on a wide range of topics related to the military, war, and society in the United states.
Our Mission
The Center for Military, War, and Society Studies facilitates essential conversations about – and with – the U.S. military, holding national or international symposia that bring together scholars, policy makers, and members of the armed forces. We foster research on the U.S. military on the KU campus and beyond, supporting scholarship that examines the military not only as an instrument of national defense but also as a central institution in American society. We also support War & Society scholarship, asking how changing social and cultural factors help to shape military institutions and affect ways of waging war, how warfare and conflict affect the broader society, economy, and culture of the United States and other nations, and how war and the military are understood and represented in American life.
What We’ve Achieved
We started a “Military History & Pedagogy” series as part of our Teaching Military History Project in 2021
We published the website teachingmilitaryhistory.com in spring 2021
We held a virtual symposium on “The War on Drugs: Fifty Years, a Trillion Dollars, and Thirty Million Arrests” in 2020, for which an edited volume was published in 2021
We established a Women’s Happy Hour at the annual meeting of the Society for Military History in 2019 (co-sponsored with the History Department at Texas Christian University and the Dale Center for the Study of War and Society at the University of Southern Mississippi)
We organized a year-long “Military & Society” series at the Hall Center for the Humanities
We hosted visiting scholars
We hosted yearly meet-and-greets with the faculty of the history departments at Ft. Leavenworth and K-State to strengthen local collaboration efforts
We held a symposium entitled “Invading Iraq: Diplomatic, Political, and Military Perspectives” for the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq in partnership with the Department of Military History at the Command and General Staff College and Army University Press
We held a “Manpower & Morale After Tet” symposium in 2019, co-sponsored by the U.S. Army Center of Military History
We held a workshop on “Managing Sex in the US Military: Historical and Contemporary Contexts” in February 2018; the corresponding edited volume came out in 2022
We held a workshop on “The Pearl Harbor Attack: A Pacific History” in December 2016 and subsequently published an edited volume in 2019
We hosted a symposium on the All-Volunteer Force in April 2016 in conjunction with the AVF Forum
People
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Beth Bailey
FOUNDING DIRECTOR
Foundation Professor, History Department
University of Kansas